


bygones

by sirfeit



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Child Abandonment, F/F, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Past Child Abuse, Tags updated as story progresses, Thievery, all characters tagged to have at least one plot arc, alternate parts angst and fluff, but this is very much a murphy-centric fic, hopefully less bleak than everything else i've written but no promises
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-06
Updated: 2016-08-08
Packaged: 2018-07-21 21:40:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7405906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sirfeit/pseuds/sirfeit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her mom opens the car door and she wakes up all the way, very suddenly. They’re not at her childhood home: they’re in a parking lot somewhere downtown. “Looks like you broke parole,” says her mom, and Murphy looks up. This isn’t. She didn’t — she couldn’t — </p><p>She could. She did. She gets out of the car. She feels numb, all the way through. Get over yourself, Murphy. She can feel tears pricking at the edges of her vision. </p><p>Her mom gets back in the car. Her mom still has the window rolled down.</p><p>“You killed your father,” she says. She rolls the window back up: “See you around, Janey.”</p><p>Her fingers burn. Her mouth is a bruise. “Fuck you,” she screams, except maybe she whispers it, and her face is warm and she’s running: shoes/pavement/cars. </p><p>--</p><p>or: jane murphy joins bella blake's underground gang after she gets out of juvie</p><p>--</p><p>This is Extremely Abandoned, 'run this town' contains most of its plot now</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. hope softens the rough edge of every promise

**Author's Note:**

> this formally dedicated in halves to cheerynoir and the_warm_beige_color
> 
> actually way more to the_warm_beige_color because they came up with like. the Entire Plot. thank

Jane Murphy gets out of lockup and they give her back the clothes she was arrested in. She’s lost some weight. Awkward.

She is released into her mother’s care. She gets into the back of her mom’s car, and her mom doesn’t talk to her. And that’s fine. She leans her head against the window and watches the scenery zip past without really seeing anything at all.

And they drive. And she’s dreading going back to her mother’s home, but it’s all in the terms of her release: she’s on probation and she has to see a counselor twice a week and she can’t leave the state.

Her mom had visited her in juvie. _Things will get better_ , she had said. _I promise I’ll do better this time. Just give me a second chance. We can both do it, Jane. Promise you’ll try for me?_

She doesn’t want to, but look here: hope softens the rough edge of every promise. And she’s weak, she’s so weak - of course she says yes. Things have been rough in the past, but things can be better.

Her mom opens the car door and she wakes up all the way, very suddenly. They’re not at her childhood home: they’re in a parking lot somewhere downtown. Downtown? Downtown in the city, in Polaris?

Has her mom moved without telling her? She thinks of an apartment, trudging up and down stairs every day, leaning out the balcony. A brief, helplessly cheerful flash: her mom and her tend to a crop of tomatoes out on the fire escape every day. Tomatoes because they’re easy to grow. Hard to fuck up.

Her mom hands her a twenty-dollar bill. Nice. Folded edges, soft enough that she can feel the cotton. “Looks like you broke parole,” says her mom, and Murphy looks up. This isn’t. She didn’t — she couldn’t —

She could. She did. She gets out of the car. She feels numb, all the way through. Get over yourself, Murphy. She can feel tears pricking at the edges of her vision. She tucks the twenty in the front pocket of her jeans.

Her mom gets back in the car. Her mom still has the window rolled down.

“You killed your father,” she says. She rolls the window back up: “See you around, Janey.”

Her fingers burn. Her mouth is a bruise. “Fuck you,” she screams, except maybe she whispers it, and her face is warm and she’s running: shoes/pavement/cars.

—

Jane Murphy survives because she always does. There’s nothing else better to do. She tucks herself into an alleyway and worries about winter.

There’s a panhandler who works the area, and she catches a couple glimpses of his face. The third time, there’s finally a spark of recognition: Mbege.

Mbege is a kid she’d known in juvie: they were friends, or at least the closest thing to friends you can be while locked up. He’s the closest friend that Murphy has ever had, but he got out before she had. She’d wished him ‘the best of luck’, and he’d given her the biggest smile she’d ever seen on him, and ruffled her hair. And, yeah. She’d let him.

It’s fate, right?

It takes her three days of half-starving to get the courage to approach him. And it’s fine. Mbege recognizes her immediately, and ruffles her hair, and there’s six months of old and terrible jokes between them, and secrets spoken in their bunk past lights out, and —

It’s almost worth it, to see him again.

And Mbege says: “Come back to Bella’s with me,” and Murphy’s like who the fuck is Bella, but she’s out of plans for living past today and honestly, her schedule is free. So she’s got no excuses, and she follows Mbege farther into the city; into the manufacturing district: smoke stains into her lungs and her bones.

Mbege leads her down a set of stairs, through a tunnel. He knocks hard on the door at the end. Light peeks out from the crack underneath the door.

The door cracks open. A set of eyes in the dark: then the door slams wide, and Murphy is pressed against the wall with something sharp at her throat. “You’re not Mbege,” says a girl. Teenager. Blonde hair, long.

Murphy darts her eyes to Mbege, unwilling to speak. She’s already thinking it: Mbege brought her here exclusively to kill her, to satisfy some weird desire in his heart, to be used in creepy Satanic rituals.

Mbege shakes his head. “Harper,” he says. “This is Murphy. I’ve talked about her, right? You know me.”

Harper? relaxes her hold on Murphy. The sharp thing lowers. Murphy remembers how to breathe. “You’ve talked about me?” she says, and there’s something warm in the pit of her stomach, and she’s a string pulled taut, and Mbege’s eyes are on her and it’s like Harper’s not even there.

“Yeah,” says Mbege. “‘course I have.” A beat. Harper scowls. “Come on in,” he says. “You have to meet Bella.”

And. Finally the name rings something in the back of her consciousness. She’s heard that name on the street: Bella Blake, and her sister, Octavia. The legend precedes them: the Blake sisters. She’s heard rumors of a gang of child thieves underneath the city. She’s dismissed it as just a myth, but here she is in the heart of it.

She enters the basement. Harper moves past her to scowl somewhere else, and Mbege leads her past nests of blankets, past sleeping kids, past a mess of electronics. There’s a jar of cash just outside one of the back rooms: Mbege tips whatever he just made panhandling into it. Murphy files the information away: if she ever fucks up, there’s her backup plan. Mbege knocks on the door, and then opens it without waiting for an answer.

There’s a girl inside, reading some huge, heavy book. She sets it aside when Mbege enters. “Hey,” she says. “Got anything interesting for me?”

“I get a plus one, right?” Mbege is saying. “This is Murphy,” he says.

Bella Blake is tall. She has burnished brown skin and a near smile. She stands up to shake Murphy’s hand. It’s warm against her skin.

“Hey,” says Murphy, and for some reason, she already feels guilty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is going to be Not As Bleak and hopefully there will be Hecka Romance and lots of girls will kiss and it'll be great
> 
> estimated at 10ish chapters but Really Who Knows
> 
> 1) bella blake's full name is bellamy blake. she just goes by bella  
> 2) jane murphy is played by kristen stewart. bella blake is played by marie avergoupolous but taller. 
> 
> hey! are you into this? let me know via: comments! kudos! cartons of eggs! or talk to me on tumblr @icetastrophe.


	2. just for us

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a million thanks to the_warm_beige_color

Murphy’s life gets much better, very suddenly.

They call the underground hideout ‘the Skybox’; it’s the sunken basement of an old office building. There’s another girl who comes by, with long blonde hair: Murphy mistakes her for Harper at first. Except. She’s softer around all the edges, and she doesn’t live at the Skybox like the rest of them; she has a home somewhere else. And she still chooses to spend most of her time here.

Her name is Clarke, and when she isn’t trying to corral them into painting a mural of the sky all across the walls, she’s heckling Bella about how to run things. She says things like _they can’t eat just cereal all the time, Bell_ , and _come on, you have to wash these blankets sometime_. At the end of every week, she goes out with Bella with the cash jar, and both of them come back with groceries: every other night, she helps Bella make decent food. They argue most of the time.

At first, the arguing really grates at Murphy, makes her anxious and sick to her stomach. And then it just fades, like everything else, into background noise. They don’t really mean anything by it: it’s just habit, an old comfort to fall back into.

There’s a collection of cots in one corner; Murphy secures one for herself without too much trouble: she’s sick of sleeping in a huddle of clothes. There’s a set of stall-type bathrooms with the plumbing miraculously still working. There’s Bella’s office, where she mostly seems to sit and read heavy books. There’s a coffeemaker that makes the worst coffee and a lot of noise. There’s another set of stairs and something that might have been a garden, a walled terrace tucked in between buildings, but they’ve cleared away most of the weeds and made a fire pit: that’s where they do most of their cooking. Finally: her skill at starting fires comes in handy; makes her useful.

Clarke tries to put up a chore chart on the wall. That goes over less well than the mural painting.

During the day, they spread out across the city, do whatever they can to bring in money for the cash jar. Murphy follows Mbege around for awhile, but Mbege does not limit himself to panhandling; he’s also skilled at pickpocketing, which is less profitable with a partner. So Murphy follows around Monty and Jasper for awhile; they fix up computers for old people in a park. Murphy knows less than nothing about computers, and they don’t need a third person in their gig, so they cut her loose. Then she heads out with Monroe and Harper: Harper plays guitar and Monroe plays violin, and when all eyes are on them, Murphy steals purses. Then somebody elbows her in the face by accident, and she goes off on them, and she gets a bloody nose for her troubles. So that’s done with.

Then: at last. Bella pairs her up with Emori, and with Emori, everything clicks into place. They’ll case a store; Murphy will distract the salesperson, Emori will steal Basically Everything, and then they leave separately. They’ll sell whatever they took on the street, and then they’ll jump the turnstile into the subway back home. They’ll tip the cash into the money jar when they get home, skimming some off the top. _Sock money_ , Emori calls it.

Sometimes Bella is standing there, and she asks: “Got anything interesting for me?”

And Murphy starts stealing little things for her. A bottle opener. A set of keys to someone’s house. Miscellaneous wallets. Bella flicks through them, giving her this tiny, approving smile. She feels shocked with warmth, all the way through.

A set of earrings. A pendant necklace. They go together.

A set of cufflinks. Bella stops her with her hand on Murphy’s wrist: the touch itself is electric, across her skin, lighting up her nerve endings. “You do know I don’t own anything that has cuffs,” she says. “Basically all I own is t-shirts?”

Murphy allows herself to stop, to stand still. She’s aware of Emori at her back, watching them. She swallows. “You’d look good in a suit,” she says.

Bella considers her. “Nah,” she says. “I think that’s more your style.” Murphy almost bristles at some imagined insult, but Bella continues: “Suspenders, with your hair pulled back, the whole thing.”

“Oh,” says Murphy. “Thanks.”

“Yeah,” says Bella, and drops her wrist. She’s wearing the earrings.

That night, Bella emerges from her office in the back to the fire pit where they’re cooking dinner. She sits down, and she opens her heavy book. She tells them the story of Prometheus’s kind-hearted brother: Epimetheus, and his wife Pandora.

If it were up to Murphy, she would never have given the human race fire. She’s got no kindness in her heart, and humans have scarcely ever been kind to her in turn. But it’s not a decision that was left to her, and that’s probably for the better: she’d still be underneath her mother’s thumb if it weren’t for fire, which cleansed her, which saved her. The last thing in Pandora’s box was hope, and that’s the worst thing she could have.

—

The next day, Emori takes her by the hand to one of the tallest buildings in the city. They take the elevator up all the way to the women’s bathroom on the top floor, and Emori goes into the closet in the corner and jimmies the lock until it opens. It reveals a ladder: she climbs up, and Murphy follows her blindly, like she always does.

It leads directly to the roof, to the sky. Emori crosses the surface easily, like a ballerina, like a tightrope walker. Murphy follows, more carefully. Finally, Emori sits at the edge, lets her legs dangle off the side.

Murphy feels too intimate with her own death to join her, so Emori waits. And the sun sets in the sky, and Emori says “This isn’t an interesting thing you can share with Bella.” And that stirs something in Murphy, so she sits down next to Emori, and there’s the city below them, and it’s so ugly. But the sun is all swirled colors pulling into darkness, and that makes it worth it. “Jane,” she says, and she doesn’t let anybody call her by her first name, and she turns, but Emori’s face won’t tell her anything. “This is just for us.”

Murphy lets out a breath. “Yeah,” she says. “Okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some links for you!
> 
> [the official byegones playlist!](https://open.spotify.com/user/22y434ouczazs3twidnkvgriy/playlist/3Ta5YFtXimNtfX9WzWRfwX) murphy [wearing a suit!](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JT-zxfxt0KA/T7uxzeQHScI/AAAAAAAAE_g/3rxcg1DXE8k/s1600/kristen-stewart-elle-7.jpg)
> 
> if you're wondering (you weren't), Bella is an electric-type gym leader
> 
> my life has been pretty 0/10 lately and your comments cheer me up considerably, so if you want to do that with your time, that'd be cool. thanks for reading!


	3. orange crushing on you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> arson isn't the only thing you can use explosives for

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> approx. 80% of this chapter was fuelled by the lovely the_warm_beige_color
> 
> content warning for a gendered slur + (implied?) child abuse

They come up to the roof twice more, and when they’ve got their legs dangling out over the city, watching it spread out before them, not saying much of anything, Emori gives her a can of something. Murphy turns it over in her hands: it’s cold and kind of wet with condensation. It’s a can of orange soda. Orange Crush, the label proclaims. Emori opens a can herself. Murphy can’t stop turning her own can over and over.

“You’re really into that,” Emori says to her, voice part laughter and part concern. It’s not even a question, although her pitch goes up at the end.

Murphy looks the can over again. _I’m orange crushing on you,_ she thinks, illogically. But she has to say something, and these are the words that pull out of her mouth, without her permission: “We weren’t allowed to have soda in juvie,” she says. “Or anything with caffeine, really.” She is very aware that this is the most information she has ever volunteered about herself, and there’s a gap in between the two of them that she can’t fill with words, so she opens the can and takes a swig. The carbonation goes up her nose and she coughs.

Emori does laugh at her, then, but Murphy can’t even find it in herself to feel awkward. 

—

Later in the week, Murphy encouragingly distracts a driver while Emori steals a cart’s worth of objects from the back of the truck. They get away scot-free, but when Murphy meets up back with Emori, she’s frowning. “I must have gotten the schedules wrong,” she says, obviously piqued. “We aren’t going to be able to sell these fireworks. Not at this time of year.”

“We could bring them back to the Skybox,” Murphy suggests. “Sell them later, when there’s more demand.”

“Sure,” says Emori, but she doesn’t sound convinced.

—

Except. They get back to the Skybox later than they usually do, and everyone is already home, and they don’t have anything for the cash jar, and Murphy is anxious and unsteady and everything is _loud._ Mbege leans over and ruffles her hair, which doesn’t really help, but whatever. Everyone is starting to get dinner together, and then Jasper and Monty come across the fireworks that she and Emori had tried to hide away.

“You brought home fireworks?” Jasper says to Emori, and she gives a short nod. “ _Yeah,_ ” continues Jasper, pulling them out, beginning to check them out. “This is my jam,” he says, and starts pulling them out of their packaging, setting them up. Emori looks like she wants to say something, but she doesn’t.

Murphy wonders if she should say something for Emori. Jasper looks over to her, and then his face is brightening up in a grin, and he says, “Hey, Murphy, you like fire. You wanna help out?”

“Uh,” says Murphy. “Well.”

Lighting the cocktail had sent a rush of fear through her. She almost let it burn in her hand, let it eat up her skin. But at the last possible millisecond, she had thrown it: the wood had gone first, it was dry and easy to burn. When she was done, only the bricks were left. 

Jasper isn’t paying her very much attention. He licks the tip of his finger, holds it up to test the wind. “But first,” he says, pulling out a pair of goggles from somewhere on his person. “Safety.”

Murphy is left holding the lighter as Jasper sets about clearing debris away from the edge of the firepit. And then it’s cleared away, and Jasper is on his stomach setting off a firework, and Murphy hardly hears or see it over the rush of blood in her ears, in her heart —

“Come on, it’s easy —“ Jasper is saying.

And. And Murphy sets off a firework, feels the explosion pound in her chest, sees how it seems to take up the whole night sky and the sky looks like — The sky looks like it’s crumbling down on top of her, and then the light dissipates, and she’s shaking, and —

“Come on, Murphy, light another one!” Jasper is laughing, and she turns, and —

And Emori is gone. And somehow she can hardly bring herself to care.

—

When the fireworks are gone, Jasper holds the lighter out to her again. “You wanna keep it?” he asks, and.

It’s very tempting. But she can feel her skin burning still, when the cops come to her door and her mother said, _what’d the little bitch get up to now._ And the metal against her wrists, against the warm skin of her palms.

“Nah,” she says, bending Jasper’s fingers back over the lighter. “It’s yours.”

—

In the morning, Emori is still gone, and Murphy sits alone on her cot for a long time until Bella says: “Sometimes she just leaves. She’ll be back, don’t worry about it too much. Jasper and Monty are going out today to the computer store to pick up parts, they could use your help,” and Murphy swallows and joins them.

Murphy doesn’t really understand anything about computers, other than they sometimes need parts, but she gets on a bus with Jasper and Monty — and they actually _pay the fare,_ what novelty — and they ride somewhere uptown, where things are fancy and there aren’t street kids like them everywhere. Murphy looks at the clean white lines and the clear windows and feels filthy, even though she washed this morning. 

Jasper and Monty clearly know the owner of the shop, because they stop and make small talk for a while. Bella didn’t specify, but she had assumed she was brought along to steal: but now she knows better. You don’t shit where you eat: that’s just simple mathematics. She runs her hands along the test computers, presses keys randomly, which gets boring very quickly. Then she turns her attention to the wall of demonstrative televisions, picks up remotes, flips through the channels.

She flips past the news, stops, and then flips back. Something had looked familiar, stirred deep in her chest. 

The newscaster is talking about missing youths, and her own face is up there, along with a whole host of other information she’d prefer nobody knew: her crime, her age, her identifying features: her mug shot. There’s a reward if anyone has any information on her, and a number to call. 

Monty slings an arm around her shoulder. “You ready to go?” he asks, and Murphy doesn’t really like being touched, but — _that’s a significant reward —_ and Monty looks up at the television, and he removes his arm, and he says, low and urgent: “Murphy, come on, let’s go.”

She turns off the television. They don’t pay for subway fare on the way back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey there! thanks for reading!
> 
> idk if i have anything to say in these endnotes other than i really love orange crush


End file.
